Mackenzie Bezos Is Now Officially 25Th Richest Person On The Planet

With the $35.6 billion dollar settlement, MacKenzie Bezos becomes the 4th richest woman in the world behind Jacqueline Mars, Alice Walton, and Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers. The divorce settlement makes her the richest author in the world by far. MacKenzie wrote the novels The Testing of Luther Albright (2005) and Traps (2013). Formerly, J.K. Rowling was the wealthiest author with a $1 billion net worth and James Patterson was the second wealthiest with an $800 million net worth. MacKenzie has a whole new life in front of her. But who is she and where did she come from? We all know her as Jeff Bezos’ wife. Now she’s not. She will get to forge a new life with $35.6 billion in the bank. (Well, figuratively at least.) MacKenzie Tuttle was born in San Francisco on April 7, 1970. Her dad was a financial planner and her mom was a homemaker. She graduated from the prestigious Hotchkiss School in Connecticut in 1998. From there she headed off to Princeton to get her bachelor’s degree in English with highest honors in 1992. One of her mentors was Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison, who called MacKenzie “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative writing classes.” In 1992, MacKenzie and Jeff met at the Wall Street firm D.E. Shaw. Jeff had graduated from Princeton in 1986 and was working in the computer science field. By the time MacKenzie Tuttle walked through the doors of D.E. Shaw, Jeff was a VP at the firm. Jeff was the first person to interview her. He had the advantage of seeing her resume before he met her, so he knew how smart she was. She was hired and became an administrative assistant. She once told Vogue that she took the job to pay the bills until she wrote her novel. After all, that’s all she ever wanted to be, a novelist. She started writing at age six when she finished a 142-page book called The Book Worm. That early book was destroyed in a flood, giving MacKenzie a lifelong habit of backing up her work frequently. MacKenzie and Jeff had offices near each other. She could hear him laughing all day long and once told Vogue that she fell in love with his laugh. MacKenzie made the first move and asked Jeff out. They went to lunch. Three months later, they were engaged and six months after their first date, they were married. Jeff was 30. MacKenzie was 23. MacKenzie’s second novel, Traps, was published in 2013. It follows a reclusive film star named Jessica Lessing as she emerges from hiding to confront her father – a con man who had been selling her out to the paparazzi for years. Since the announcement of the separation, MacKenzie has kept a low profile. She has not been photographed since the divorce announcement. Will MacKenzie go the route of Laurene Powell Jobs and become heavily involved in philanthropy? Will she publish more novels? The New York Times spoke to some off the record publishing executives who were gleefully excited about the blockbuster potential if MacKenzie Bezos decided to write a memoir. Now that is a book I’d read!